Art in Bloom exhibits will fill TMA with flowers

Flowers will soon fill Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) for Art in Bloom, a four-day celebration set to coincide with Mother’s Day weekend.

Art in Bloom will consist of two free exhibits. One, to be displayed in the main museum, will feature floral arrangements inspired by pieces from TMA’s art collection. The other, to be displayed in the Glass Pavilion, will feature floral arrangements displayed in glass vessels designed by local florists and created by TMA’s glass artists.

TMA curators and ambassadors developed a list of 45 TMA pieces for 23 local florists and garden club members to select from to use as inspiration when designing their floral arrangements, said Elizabeth Emmert, co-chair of the event with Cindy Rimmelin. Both are past presidents of the Toledo Museum of Art Museum Ambassadors, which organized the weekend events, and have been planning the event for the past year.

“I think [visitors will like] seeing the way each arranger has interpreted the art works and the different flowers they’ve used,” Emmert said. “I visited an Art in Bloom at the Carnegie Museum last spring and was just stunned by the way they could re-create what a painting looks like, particularly with the colors in the abstract paintings.”

The pieces on the list were diverse, ranging from paintings, sculptures, Egyptian coffins and chandeliers, Emmert said.

“I think everyone’s so excited for something light and spring-like after that winter,” Emmert said.

“It will be a fun way to look at some of the museum collection in a very different way. It’s a totally different way of looking at art.”

Art in Bloom events have been part of fundraising efforts for museums across the country for decades. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has held the event for more than 35 years. But the addition of glass vessels designed by florists is unique to Toledo, Emmert said.

“Brian Kennedy thought it would be great to represent the fact that Toledo has a history in glass and that’s why we have a special twist to it that I don’t think any other Art in Bloom has,” Emmert said.

“Glass is an essential part of our legacy, and it’s a medium we continue to explore in new ways,” Kennedy said in a news release. “Introducing the vessel as an equal part of the floral arrangement will be a unique visual opportunity.”

The vessels, which range from classic to abstract, will be displayed throughout the Glass Pavilion.

“They are just fantastic. They are very different. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect but each one is quite unique,” Emmert said. “Each florist came in and had half a day to work with our glass artists.”

Angel Elden, owner of Angel 101 in Perrysburg, is one of the 12 area florists who designed a glass vessel with the help of TMA Glass Studio Manager Jeff Mack.

Glass vessel designed for Art in Bloom by Angel Elden of Angel 101 in Perrysburg. Photo Courtesy Toledo Museum of Art

“Mine is a very unusual freeform piece,” Elden said. “Besides the top, there’s actually a second hole off to the side where I’m going to have some additional blooms.”

Elden said she brought some inspiration with her, but didn’t go in with a fully preplanned color or pattern.

“I walked through the Glass Pavilion and picked out a couple of artists — Dale Chihuly, Marvin Lipofsky — who are very freeform, organic,” Elden said. “I also took pieces of interest to me — a piece of moss, a tulip bulb, a really cool twisted branch. These to me are cool and organic and, just like in the spring, you never know what you’re going to get out of the ground. Really fresh and new. That’s what I wanted to do.”

It’s the same method Elden plans to use when arranging flowers in the vessel.

“I have some things picked out and somewhat of a concept, but again I want to do it very free-form. Sometimes you think you’re going to go one way but then you stop and say, ‘No, I love this,’” Elden said. “I’m anxious to see it all come together.”

Both sets of arrangements will be on display starting May 8. Free, hour-long floral exhibition tours will be offered at 1 p.m. May 9, 11 a.m. and noon May 10 and 1 and 2 p.m. May 11. Tours begin on the lower level of the main museum near the Matisse mural.

The glass vessels will be auctioned off during a live auction at the Tuileries Jubilee Gala, set for 6:30-10 p.m. May 8, but will remain on display at the museum through May 11. The gala will offer heavy grazing, live entertainment and a silent auction. Cost is $125 for museum members and $150 for nonmembers.

James Farmer

Author, interior designer and Southern Living editor-at-large James Farmer will make his first visit to Toledo as part of the Art in Bloom weekend celebration.

A lecture and demonstration is set for 10 a.m. May 9 at the main museum. Cost is $30. A luncheon, set for noon May 9 and featuring French-inspired cuisine, is $30. Advance reservations are required. Farmer will also offer a spring wreath workshop 2-4 p.m. May 9. Cost is $90 and space is limited.

“I’ll be talking about my background, growing up in a small southern town,” said Farmer during a recent phone interview. “Family recipes, gardening on the farm, some fun parts to growing up that brought me to where I am today.

James Farmer. Photo Courtesy Toledo Museum of Art

“I always hope people are educated but entertained as well,” Farmer said. “I hope they learn something they can take home and enrich their lives, but I hope to entertain as well.”

Farmer’s main influence was his grandmother, who taught him how to cook and instilled in him an appreciation of the garden-to-table lifestyle.

His newest book, “Dinner on the Ground: Southern Suppers and Soirees,” a cookbook featuring events, recipes and stories, is set to be published this spring.

“It’s my life set in menu form,” said Farmer, who was born and raised in Georgia. “You can cook a whole meal or just one dish. It’s full of fresh, local ingredients and it’s southern-inspired.”

Wreath workshop attendees will be making a wreath of dried flowers from one of Farmer’s books, “Wreaths for All Seasons.”

“These workshops are a lot of fun because you really get an opportunity to work hand in hand with people and give them a little bit of instruction and just get to know them a little bit,” Farmer said.

Farmer has been editor-at-large for Southern Living magazine for about three years. His family was featured in the Thanksgiving issue and the current issue features his idea for a hanging basket using a pulley system.

“It gives me a great outlet when I have fun ideas to share,” Farmer said.

When decorating for spring, Farmer suggested looking outside for inspiration and bringing the outdoors in. But first — spring cleaning.

“It’s a little bit of a cliche, but spring cleaning does a lot for design,” Farmer said. “We kind of hibernate and nest all winter so you want to put up those heavy blankets and sweaters and any reminder of winter and then look outside for inspiration. Bring something from the outside in.”

Other TMA events

Other events at TMA over Mother’s Day weekend include a Mother’s Day brunch in the Glass Pavilion with seatings at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. May 11. Cost is $35 for adults, $17.50 for ages 3-11 and free for ages 2 and younger. Cuisine will be French-themed and there will be live music, a family photo and a cash bar. Advance reservations are required.

There will also be flower-themed activities for children age 10 and younger in the Family Center from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 8, 3:30-8 p.m. May 9 and noon to 5 p.m. May 11.

Proceeds from the ticketed events support TMA art education programs. Some events may be sold out. Call TMA at (419) 255-8000 ext. 7469 to check availability.

Color Ignited: TMA commemorates half century of studio glass

Toledo is now known as the birthplace of the studio glass movement, but participants at a glass workshop 50 years ago had trouble even forming a bubble.

“Nobody knew anything. Literally no one knew how to make a bubble. There was no one there to ask,” recalled 89-year-old Toledo artist Edith Franklin, one of the fewer than 10 people who attended the first of two 1962 glass workshops at Toledo Museum of Art.

“The turning point for me, for all of us, was close to the last day of the class, this old man came dressed in a suit and tie and someone started to talk to him. He had worked as a glassblower for Libbey. They said, ‘Would you like to try?’ He took off his coat and his vest, sat down, put his thumb over the hole at the top and there came the bubble. Magic! Here we had been huffing and puffing for a week and then there it was. Simple. With the touch of a thumb.”

The man was Harvey Leafgreen, a glassblower who had worked for the Libbey Glass division at Owens-Illinois for years. Afterward, he worked one-on-one with the workshop participants.

‘Color Ignited’

“Color Ignited: Glass 1962–2012,” a new exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA), will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic workshops led by Harvey Littleton. The free show, which focuses on the evolution of the use of color in glass, will debut June 14 during the Glass Art Society Conference and run through Sept. 9.

On display will be more than 80 objects from private collections, galleries and other museums as well as TMA’s collection, including work by Littleton, Dominick Labino, Marvin Lipofsky, Dale Chihuly, Dan Dailey, Laura de Santillana, Heinz Mack, Klaus Moje, Yoichi Ohira, Ginny Ruffner and Judith Schaechter.

The exhibit will be the first in the new $3 million Frederic and Mary Wolfe Gallery of Contemporary Art. The space was home to TMA’s glass collection before the Glass Pavilion opened in 2006.

Jutta-Annette Page, TMA’s curator of glass and decorative arts and vice president of the Glass Art Society, called the exhibition “visually enthralling” and said she hopes visitors leave with a better appreciation of Toledo’s role in the evolution of studio glass.

“I very much hope this exhibition will make it clear this very important movement started here in Toledo and also help people realize this is an international movement that is here to stay,” Page said.

Visitors can also view the exhibit from the gallery’s mezzanine level.

“It allows people to look at the works on the ground floor from a different vantage point, which some of the artists are intending on in their works,” Page said.

Several of Franklin’s pieces from the original studio glass workshop will be on display.

Glass pieces by Edith Franklin and Tom McGlauchlin made in the original glass workshop at Toledo Museum of Art in 1962. PHOTO BY RICHARD GOODBODY/COURTESY TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART

“I had them at home for years and nobody looked at them and now they’ve become famous,” Franklin said.

Such early pieces are rare, Page said.

“It’s a very, very small group of surviving objects and the reason for that is they had not really figured out the technological issues that came with this experimentation,” Page said. “Most of the pieces broke.”

The first workshop used glass from melted-down fiberglass marbles made at the Johns Manville plant in Waterville. Learning to add color was part of the experimentation process.

“If you look at these very earliest pieces they were all greenish, transparent glass because the color was entirely determined by the glass batch,” Page said. “Very early on the palette was limited to the prefabricated glass the artists were using, but they very quickly experimented with color.”

Right place, right time

Franklin, a lifelong Toledo resident, was taking a ceramics class at TMA when she heard about the 1962 glass workshop. She was told it was open to university ceramics professors only, but a week before the workshop, she was invited to attend.

“They couldn’t fill the class. There were not enough people signed up from across the country to fill the class,” Franklin said. “I’m a firm believer in luck. Right place, right time and you’re lucky you were the one that happened to be there.”

Franklin never worked with glass again, but has fond memories of that first workshop.

“It wasn’t for me. I did it because I was curious, but I’m too little to lift that heavy pipe with the gather on the end. My God, I couldn’t lift the damn thing. But it was a wonderful experience,” Franklin said. “It’s been exciting these past couple of years. It’s nice it’s getting the recognition it should. Too bad some of the people aren’t alive who would have been enjoying this.”

Admission to the museum, located at 2445 Monroe St., is free. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays and major holidays.

Chihuly’s guts, glass and glory

Dale Chihuly turns it up — way up — in the studio. Whether he’s drawing or directing a team of glassblowers, the artist takes it to 11.

“In the morning, it might be classical music; and in the middle of the day, it might be more hip music; in the afternoon, it could be more jazz. We play a big variety of music — Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen — anything that I like,” Chihuly said and laughed.

“If I’m not there, they can play whatever they want,” he said of his crew and laughed again.

The international art superstar cranks up the volume, color, creativity — and visibility of studio glass.

Of course, it’s hard to miss some of his ginormous multipiece works.

Dale Chihuly

There was “Chihuly Over Venice,” which featured 14 dazzling chandeliers suspended over the city’s canals and piazzas in 1996. Three years later, his magic appeared to be a mirage: Huge blocks of ice from Alaska made a 60-foot wall outside of the Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem. Throngs celebrated the millennium by viewing “Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000,” a project that cost more than $1 million and included a crystal mountain.

“Ideas come to me sometimes, they just feel sort of like they come right out from the gut. Nothing that I’ve thought about necessarily for a long time — somehow it just appears,” he said during a phone interview from his Ballard studio in Seattle.

Chihuly’s gritty obsession began in 1965 when he melted stained glass and picked up a metal pipe.

“It was just the process of blowing human breath down a blowpipe and it came out at the other end like a bubble. It’s a pretty amazing technique,” he said.

In 1968, the glassblower traveled to Murano, Italy, to learn more about the ancient art. He was the first American to work at the Venini glass factory.

“What I learned that was the most important was how to work in a team, because all the Italians work in a team. And when I came back, I worked with a team of my own students,” Chihuly said. “The bigger the team, the more it allows you to work larger.”

He and his grand concepts are globally renowned for explosive, electrifying color.

“When I first started using glass, my first use of it was really with stained glass and stained glass comes in hundreds of colors,” the 68-year-old said. “So, right from the beginning, I had the option of using whatever color I wanted, and I ended up using most all of them.”

First look

The Glass City got its first look at Chihuly’s vibrant work in 1970 when he was one of 11 artists invited to submit work for “Toledo Glass National Exhibition III” at the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA). He and college friend and collaborator Jamie Carpenter created “Monotropa Uniflora,” a stunning vision of neon, argon and blown glass.

In 1972, the Toledo Museum of Art and the American Craft Museum in New York teamed up for an exhibit, “American Glass Now.” Chihuly and Carpenter convinced TMA’s director, then Otto Wittmann, to support their work in the glass studio to create large-scale pieces for the event.

“I remember setting up the door that we showed. We showed another piece with bent plate glass with dry ice in it. I remember setting up those two pieces,” Chihuly said. “We were very thankful to be invited.”

Chihuly was grateful to be alive following a 1976 car accident in England that took the sight in his left eye and permanently injured his right ankle and foot. He started working with an assistant glassblower and gave up the gaffer, glassblower, position after dislocating his shoulder while bodysurfing in 1979.

“No, it wasn’t difficult,” he said of the transition. “I prefer to direct the team instead of be the gaffer on the team because we do a lot of big work and that means having a lot of people around; we have as many as 16 people on the pad at one time all working on the same piece. If I’m not the gaffer, I can kind of, you know, walk around and watch all aspects of it, whereas if you’re the gaffer, you have to concentrate just on that.”

He began to focus more on drawing to convey his designs to his team. Some of those ideas involved placing glass floats, flowers, ferns and tumbleweeds outdoors. His 23 red glass reeds, some as high as 8 feet tall, can be seen at the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library in the Wintergarden. They were installed there in 2001.

Gold over Cobalt Blue Venetian #192. Glass, 1989 Dale Chihuly.

“It just seems to look just right,” Chihuly said of the environmental installations. “I’ve been doing that for probably 40 years, but I’ve been doing them more in the last 10 years. I’ve done about 10 shows in botanical gardens, usually in a greenhouse along with showing them outside as well.”

He has been drawn to water his whole life.

“I love working with water,” he gushed. “I think it’s just the fact that glass is so much like water; it’s a liquid, you know, to start with, and it moves and flows like water.”

Chihuly’s fluid works seem to defy gravity, capture movement and mesmerize the masses.

“Everybody takes away whatever they want to and it’s something different for everybody,” he said

‘Chihuly Toledo!’ extended at TMA

Swirling shapes, eye-popping colors and pulsating music greet visitors who enter the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion Gallery Four to see “Chihuly Toledo!”

“Everything [Chihuly] we own, literally, is on view. There’s about 36 objects ranging in date from 1975 to 2006,” said Jutta Page, glass curator at the museum. “[The exhibit] provides a very good overview, I think, of the whole entire span of Dale Chihuly’s career.”

On display are some of the artist’s Blanket Cylinders from the mid-1970s; Seaforms, Macchia and Persians from the 1980s; and Venetians and Niijima Floats from the 1990s. Sketches and drawings that inspired the work also are included.

“He has been very influential on the entire field of studio glass,” Page said. “And I have to say that Chihuly has always been very true to his affinity to Venetian glassmaking. He largely relies on Venetian glassmaking techniques that have been in use hundreds of years.”

The curator said she is a fan of the diversity of Chihuly’s work.

“I like the variety of it and there are certain parts, certain series, that I particularly like,” she said. “I’ve always thought the Niijima Floats that he’s created — which are the largest pieces his team has been able to blow — are just mesmerizing.”

Check out “Green and Gold Sparkle Float.” The magnificent orb shimmers with gold leaf and crushed glass from every angle.

And be sure to use the pavilion’s Monroe Street entrance, where “Campiello del Remer #2” hangs. The chandelier was one of 14 featured in “Chihuly Over Venice.” The original piece was split in half; the artist’s team rearranged 243 pieces when installing the 9-foot light in Toledo.

By popular demand, the free exhibit has been extended and will be on display through Feb. 7. For more information, visit www.toledomuseum.org.

This entry was posted
on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Arts and Life, Exhibits, Featured.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.